


The distance between points

by miabicicletta



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/M, Not really a casefic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 20:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6439387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Because, Molly." He looked to her, unguarded and contrite. “I needed time.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The distance between points

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AsteraceaeBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsteraceaeBlue/gifts).



> Based on the premise of one of my favorite series, the Oxford Time Travel books by Connie Willis. Wherein time travel exists and is used by British historians in the mid 21st century for academic purposes. And, as it turns out, when you send graduate students to the past, *things go wrong.* 
> 
> For my dear **[AsteraceaeBlue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AsteraceaeBlue/pseuds/AsteraceaeBlue)** , because she is, quite simply, the best.

* * *

 

“Time is the longest distance between two points.”

-Tennessee Williams

 

* * *

 

A gong rang, causing the conversation throughout to cease. Guests filtered to the main dining room. Slipping into the drawing room, Molly sought out the tall, familiar figure of her companion. He caught her look, and dropped into one of the high-backed chairs near the far windows, a cozy, private corner. Lifting her skirts, she lowered her gaze and demurely made her way through the slowly emptying room and perched on the chair's arm by his side..

 

“Well?” Sherlock Holmes asked, setting his pipe aside and looking up at her. In the smoky candlelight, he was unearthly beautiful.

 

Molly clasped her hands together, fingering the little diamond ring upon her left hand and summoning all the calm and poise she knew a young society woman was wont to maintain.

 

“Got it,” she said, patting “If the poison was introduced into the tobacco ash, we’ll know once we get back to the lab,” she said softly, her prim, genteel countenance betraying nothing of the thrill coursing through her veins.

 

Sherlock’s mouth tipped up. “Excellent.” He took her gloved hand, sniffing at the small smudge left where she had picked up Lord Darlington’s discarded cigarillo. An older matron by the mantle glanced over, eying the pair of them with interest. Sherlock pressed his lips to her wrist, murmuring his praise.

 

Molly flicked her little gold and jade fan, offering an unassuming smile to one of the other party-goers before leaning down closer to Sherlock. She ran her hand through his slicked back hair, batting her eyes. How fortunate for once, her tendency to flush with attraction. She hoped it masked the surreptitious scheming well enough.  

 

“The painting,” she said, gazing at Sherlock with adoration.

 

“Untouched,” he replied, narrowing her eyes.  “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

 

She grit her teeth, forced her smile brighter, and whispered behind her Chinese fan, “Heaven forbid I make eyes _at_ my _husband_.” She glanced about. “Especially whilst trying to avoid suspicion.”

 

“You look idiotic.”

 

She dropped her voice to a dangerous whisper. “I’ll remind you how welcome you are to have John accompany you on the next case. Though, I imagine he won’t be as keen on the seventeen and a half layers of underwear requisite for this sort of social function, _darling,_ ” she returned evenly.

 

“Indeed.” His mouth tipped up at the sweet fire in her voice. “Though wouldn’t that be a sight.”

 

She couldn't help but smirk.

 

He stood and offered her his arm. “So it was stolen after dinner?” she asked. 

 

Sherlock nodded in affirmation. “Once Darlington collapsed, the chaos would have offered the cover for our thief to slip from the group unnoticed, duck into Mrs. Darlington’s rooms and take it.”

 

Molly nodded. She thought once more of the _Storm on the Sea of Galilee._ So much trouble for such a small thing. After tonight, all trace of the little Rembrandt in the rooms above would vanish. For the next hundred and seventy years, it would remain missing, perhaps smuggled out of Europe, or destroyed in one of the three terrible wars over the intervening decades, maybe forgotten altogether. Identifying the thief would help them trace the painting's journey, and, perhaps, eventually recover it. In time. 

 

Glancing at the clock, she saw the clock tick just past nine. “According to Dr. Brewer’s notes, Lord Darlington’s time of death was recorded as 10:07. His residence is Chancery Lane." 

 

“Twenty-minutes by hansom across Lincoln’s Inn.”

 

Walking through the timeline, she reasoned, “Assuming your theory is correct–”

 

He looked at her, offended. “Of course I’m right. What else would I be? ‘Assuming your theory is correct,’” he scoffed.  

 

She fixed him with a look before pressing on. “Assuming your theory is correct, _if_ there’s poison present in the tobacco, depending on the strength of the dosage, it should take effect within the next twenty minutes, triggering the seizure Lady Darlington described in the letter to her sister.”

 

Sherlock nodded. “That’s what I estimate as well. Death within the hour.”

 

Molly sighed, looking over her shoulder toward the dining room. “If only–” She stopped herself, knowing it was fruitless to continue.

 

Sherlock fixed her with a look. “You know that’s not how it works,” he chastised.

 

She straightened her shoulders, meeting his gaze openly. “No, yes. I know.”

 

“There are rules. It _happened._ ”

 

Molly pursed her lips, looking away. She didn’t need a lecture on ‘the rules.’ She knew them very well. And anyway, she half-wanted to snip back at him, just because they were laws of nature and time travel, she didn’t have to _like_ them.

 

He checked his pocket watch. “We’ve two hours left. Well, that’s if Donovan is plotting. Could be two days if we’ve wound up with Anderson.”

 

“Hush.”

 

“Could be two _years_.”

 

“This is a flash time assignment–”

 

“Case.”

 

“Case. Fine,” she corrected, obliging his own, stubborn terminology, trivial it was. However different his motivations and his methods, it amounted to the same thing the others were doing. “Sally will still be on shift to plot the retrieval. Now, where do you think they escaped with the painting?”

 

He tipped his chin. “From the kitchens. Back alley is our best bet.”

 

She nodded. “Lead on then, Mr. Holmes.

 

“You know,” he whispered a bit later, after they had snuck discretely through the main house through servants passages to the shadows of the mews. “It would be quite the scandal if someone encountered us. What _ever_ would the ton think?”

 

She smirked “After the impression you made this evening, Mr. Holmes,” she returned, recalling the astounded faces of Lord Darlington’s guests at Sherlock’s forward deductions and his colorful stories of murder and mayhem. “I do not think the ladies and gentlemen of Society would be terribly surprised at your corrupting influence, given your notorious disregard for the social graces, ‘husband.’” _Nor would they blame me, given your indecent good looks_ , Molly did not add.

 

The look he gave her was an odd one. Amused, skeptical, but there was more to it than that. She felt there was almost something searching in it as well.

 

A scream from the windows above broke the night. Voices were raised. As Sherlock had predicted, within moments, a figure emerged from the servant’s quarters. In his arms was a large square package draped in a sheet. The man whistled twice. A horse cart rolled to the end of the mews several yards away.

 

“It’s Ignatius Carlyle!” Molly gasped. “You were right!”

 

“You say that like you’re surprised,” he hissed. “Ooh, and an accomplice, but who...?”

 

He stepped from the shadows along the fence to get a closer look...directly into a puddle of London filth and slime. The splash echoed loudly across in the brick and cobblestone.

 

“Oi!” A loud, angry American voice broke the heavy silence of the alley. A large man with a boxer’s build spotted them, his fist in the air.

 

“What now?” Molly asked, recoiling.  

 

“Now,” Sherlock said, reaching for her hand. “We run.”

 

* * *

 

A brilliant light bloomed in the air before them.

 

They stepped through the shimmer...

 

...and into the the folds of the net. The familiar space of Balliol’s History lab coalesced into view. Peering through the glass into the control room, Sherlock frowned at the techs. “Miraculous.”

 

Phillip Anderson punched at a button. A speaker projected his voice into the drop chamber. He raised a hand in greeting. “Good to see you–"

 

Sherlock pulled his leather gloves off, stalking forward. “Miraculous that Anderson managed to plot a retrieval in the same _decade_  as us.”

 

“Always a pleasure, Sherlock,” Anderson breezed, used to the abuse. Behind him at the console, Sally Donovan scowled outrageously.

 

“Behave,” Molly huffed, still trying to catching her breath. She reached down to gather her skirts. She hobbled awkwardly toward decon. “I’m never doing 19th with you again. Or _any_ drops requiring corsets, for that matter.”

 

He glanced down, as if just noticing the outfit Wardrobe had issued her. “Noted.”

 

They split off. Molly took her cigarillo to Research, where she left the sample for Soo Lin to run. “Ping me when you have the results, okay?”

 

Soo Lin nodded her assent, promising to be in touch as soon as she got an answer back. With that, Molly brought the little data recorder with her to the ladies locker, where she gave a summary of their drop into the Darlington’s ill-fated gala, documenting their activities that night across long-ago London, their learnings and interactions with the period contemporaries. Molly usually took care to be as detailed as possible, overcompensating, such as it was, for how spare Sherlock’s own perfunctory accounts tended to be ("Dull," was the extend of his justification), which she knew always drew ire from the rest of the History faculty. Tonight, however, she was in no mood to give more than the absolute basics.

 

Once she had wrenched herself free the evil corset and underthings, Molly felt instantly better, a feeling that increased with a quick bird bath and rinse of her face. Sally had brought in the box of things she’d left before going to Wardrobe earlier in the day. She she slipped back into her own clothes, Molly felt absurdly privileged and deeply, _profoundly_  grateful to have been born a British contemporary of the mid-21st. To be a woman in almost any other time period, even in affluent England, often meant a life of discomfort, oppression, and disregard. 

 

She was tying the laces on her Chucks when he swept into the room, changed once more in his customary bespoke suit and coat. The dark Scandinavian cut hung on him in a way that leant his angular beauty a bold, masculine strength. As ever, Sherlock Holmes was the very height of 2066 fashion. History’s finest, indeed.

 

“Why isn’t Lestrade here?” he asked, apparently of her.

 

Molly stood. Clad in jeans and a light gray jumper, all that remained of her Victorian character was a twist of curling brown hair, pinned up behind her left ear. It was a nice look, Molly thought. She’d wear it that way again, sometime. Fashion, she had it on good authority, was nothing if not cyclical.   

 

Molly closed her locker, looking to Sherlock. “Administration. London. He was on his way in when we left.”

 

Sherlock sighed. “Pity. Wanted to tell him about the accomplice.”

 

Molly lifted heavy Victorian dress into her arms, carrying it down the stairs to Wardrobe. “Just ping him,” she offered, to Sherlock. 

 

He shrugged. “It can wait.”

 

“Oh, thank you, dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, seeing them and accepting their clothes. “Any issues? Damage? I always assume the worst from Sherlock’s drops.”

 

Molly waved her off. “Just a bit of mud and perspiration this time.”

 

“Very good of you to keep him out of trouble. Oh, the number of times I’ve had to scrub the _blood_ from his clothes...” She trailed off, with an exasperated sigh. She held the dusky gold-embroidered pink against Molly’s skin. “Such a lovely color on you. Though, can you imagine what an awful burden it would be, climbing into a thing every day?”

 

Molly pulled on her coat as Mrs. Hudson disappeared their outfits into the vast, secret closets of the Oxford History department’s costumery. “Think I’d have been tempted to cross-dress,” she joked.  

 

“That’s my girl,” Mrs. Hudson said, tossing her a wink.

 

“Really, Molly,” Sherlock sighed.

 

“Whalebone, Sherlock,” she said, wrapping her stripey scarf around her neck. “Women trussed up with lace and ribbon and the _bones of whales._  And for what? To keep the poor, susceptible menfolk from being driven wild by the sight of their unbound bosoms.”

 

Sherlock muttered something about the "damn patriarchy" under his breath. 

 

“Men,” Mrs. Hudson sympathized. “Oh, I’m to bring a few things up to Mr. Knight while he’s learning to use a landline phone in Props. Do you have anything else to return?”

 

“Oh, yes.” She held out the diamond ring. “It’s probably under Sherlock’s name–.”

 

“Not Props’,” Sherlock said. He took the ring from her, pocketing it quickly.

 

“Okay.” Molly shrugged. She felt odd knowing it wasn’t just a knock-off bit of glass and metal someone else had worn a hundred times, but something that actually belonged to Sherlock. But then, she supposed, his flat was filled with all sorts of mad things. A ring was hardly the strangest thing she knew he owned. Wasn't it? 

 

Sherlock said nothing more the matter. “Fancy some chips?” he asked, changing the subject. 

 

She was a bit surprised he was not staying to confirm the lab results. Times were he'd be back from a real-time drop, time-lagged and batty, nagging on of the techs or post-grads in Research to help him sort evidence. She chalked it up to John's good influence. Perhaps he truly was mellowing with age. “Sure,” Molly answered. "I haven't eaten in a hundred years." 

 

He laughed at her very awful joke despite himself, which was nice. "God, Molly," he groaned. His irritable scowl, at least, was affectionate.  

 

They left the lab at Balliol, stepping through the gates to Magdalen Street. The Martyr’s Memorial towered against a darkening sky. They had stepped back into time at early evening, at the end of a cold January day. A chilly east wind nipped at their heels as the headed into the fading light. “Professor Holmes. Another day, another case.”

 

“With any luck we’ll have the murder settled by morning. More importantly, we have a next clue in finding our long-lost Rembrandt. Well done, Dr. Hooper.”

 

Molly smiled, hesitating a moment as he stepped off the kerb on the Broad. “Sherlock. What was this about? You really didn’t need me tonight. John could have just have easily gotten in with you. It wasn’t just couples, you know.”

 

“I know. But I didn’t want John there.”

 

Her face fell. When Sherlock and John fought, bad things tended to happen. “Is everything okay?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“I don’t understand. Now that the baby’s been born, is he leaving?”

 

Sherlock looked down. “No, he’s not leaving. How to put it?” He asked craned his neck back. “Just... mustering out. An ‘honorable discharge from active duty,’ might be the appropriate metaphor for a specialist in military medicine.”

 

It was entirely normal, expected, even, for historians to do fewer drops once they’d settled down. Still, she felt a pang of empathy for Sherlock. His friendship with John, and their mad, time-travel mysteries were the stuff of modern legend. It was a partnership and a pastime that had, in different ways, saved and transformed the pair of them.

 

Molly reached out, squeezing his arm. “I’m sorry.”

 

“‘Everything changes; nothing stands still.’”

 

She smirked a bit at Oxford’s great academic detective reduced to quoting Greek philosophers. “Do I detect a bit of _melancholia_ there, Heraclitus?”

 

Undeterred, he again quoted some wisdom of the ages. “To the contrary. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.’”

 

At the quirk of her brow – arched as if to suggest _Who are you and what have you done with Sherlock Holmes?_ – he shrugged. “I mean it. I am happy for John. I would be a poor student of history if I did not recognize and accept in inevitability of change.”

 

Night was falling to dark. They followed the Broad to where it became George Street, turning down the tiny cobblestone path of Bulwark’s Lane. She thought he might want to duck into the History faculty college, but he made no sign of interest in going up to his office.  

 

“It’s hardly the end of our partnership, though I will, of course, miss working with John regularly. But I’ve been thinking for sometime now of...pursuing a new adventure, as he might phrase it in that awful series he does. Big one. Important.”

 

“You know you love his writing.”

 

A long-suffering look met a wry grin.

 

“What’s the subject? Have you started research?” Molly continued.

 

“As a matter of fact I have. Though I’ll confess, since I’ve no experience with this sort of thing, I anticipate I’ll need quite a lot of guidance. John and Mary agree.”

 

“Ah, so they’re involved as well?”

 

“As I said: Important.”

 

“What do you need help with?”

 

“Oh, I should think a someone with a background in medical anthropology, pathology, and forensic historical analysis would suit.”

 

She rolled her eyes at his grand recitation of her CV. Why he couldn’t just _ask_ her outright...

 

She heaved a sigh. “Where to this time, Sherlock? And no, before you start, I have _not_ changed my mind about the Plague. I’ve no desire to do Middle English, even with an L &A chip, it’d take me weeks to get it right. Remember that time on the Ricoletti case for 18th? When Anderson botched the L coding? Ugh, so embarrassing.”

 

She groaned in frustration, recalling the looks she’d met from her students when, halfway through an examination of the remains of a Mesolithic woman recovered in Koelbjerg bog, she’d looked up to see her entire seminar staring at her like she’d grown a second head.

 

“ _Che cos’e?_ ” Molly had asked, unnerved by their worried expressions.

 

“Sorry, Dr. Hooper,” one of her trainees ventured. “Um, just wondering what the language requirements are for this course. Do we need to know the material in Italian?”

 

She nudged Sherlock’s elbow with mock outrage. “I was lapsing into _Italiano_ for a _month._ ”

 

“Angelo found it charming,” he quipped.

 

Molly summoned as earnest a glare as she could. No use. It never was with this man. “So where it it, then?”

 

“What?”

 

“This drop. Your next case.”

 

He stopped walking. “There’s no drop, Molly.”

 

She turned, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean exactly that. There isn’t a case.”

 

“Then what is the investigation?”

 

His mouth ticked up. “I didn’t say there was one–”

 

She was confused. “You said…”

 

They stood at the corner where Paradise Street crossed over Castle Mill stream. Along the street, faux wrought-iron gas lamps (the most recent project of the historical preservation society) were flickering in the growing dark. Pinprick stars began to populate the sky. Lights and stone shimmered in the icy black water, in the cold and falling night.

 

“So, it's–” She swallowed as he took a step toward her. “It’s...not your area, then?”

 

“Historically speaking?” he deadpanned. “No.”

 

Close as they were, there was greater warmth now between them. “Sounds serious.”

 

“I believe it has the potential to be, yes. One of the many reasons I’m committed to–” Here he paused, knowing, as she did, that they understood. That they each saw, that they each _felt_ , the undercurrent meaning. He hesitated, studying her wide-eyed expression, perhaps not knowing what to read in it. “To seeing it through.”

 

Thoughts, emotions, conflicts tumbled into a disparate stream that crossed all the years and times they had known one another, a wellspring of impressions, heartaches, hopes.

 

He looked down. “I used to think it would be dangerous. Complicated, unnecessary, this kind of thing. Especially to The Work. But…”

 

“But?” she repeated.

 

He shrugged, his expression a lighter. “I was wrong. Happens.”

 

“Does it?”

 

His eyes crinkled. “Occasionally.”

 

“Why now? Why not...before?” she managed to stammer

 

“Because, Molly." He looked to her, unguarded and contrite. “I needed time.”

 

She was, she felt in her life before, a generally happy person. Content. Optimistic. But the quality of joy that struck her in that moment, she realized later, looking back, was an entirely new feeling. It was happiness at an exponential level. It was orders of magnitude beyond. Incredulity flooded through her. She heard him, and she understood, and she laughed, breathless with delight.

 

“Oh, Sherlock,” she breathed. “You don’t mean ‘adventure.’”

 

His eyes were the exact color of the clear twilight. She’d never think of blue as the color of sadness ever again. “Not the word most people use, no,” he rumbled.  

 

“No,” she repeated, seeing the man and friend and face she knew so well, and yet something in it she’d never seen there before. She hadn’t dared.

 

Winter air billowed between them. A dust of snow fell. It caught in his hair, and sparkled. “What say you, Molly Hooper?” He brushed a falling curl behind her ear. “Are you with me?”

 

Her vision fractured into crystals and light. She smiled.

 

* * *

 

John shrugged out of his coat as he stepped through the Porter’s gate into History.

 

Dimmock looked up over a screen displaying the day's drop calculations. “Did you hear?”

 

John rubbed his hands together. “Hear what?”

 

“Holmes cracked the Darlington case. Old man was murdered the night his Rembrandt got nicked. Got back from 1895 yesterday, results verified this morning.”

 

John sighed in annoyance. The dick! “He didn’t tell me he was doing 19th again,” John groused. If he sounded petulant, he didn’t care. 19th century was their casework bread and butter. For reasons he could never quite put his finger on, he had always felt, for lack of a better word, _at home_ when investigating crimes of the era with Sherlock Holmes. He felt irked, and just a bit offended that his best friend had gone on a drop without him, even if John had expressly told him he’d be less available now that the baby was born...He set his hands on his hips, sighed. 

 

Dimmock shrugged. _What can you do?_

 

John reached for a tablet to pull up the debrief. “He’s not supposed to be doing solo trips, anyway.”

 

Dimmock punched some keys, took a sip of his coffee. “He wasn’t.”

 

“Sorry?”

 

Dimmock tossed clarified, “It wasn’t a solo trip. Dunworthy would have his head.”

 

John frowned. “So who was his number two–?”

 

Dimmock looked up, a funny look on his face. “Yeah, that’s the other thing.” He turned over his shoulder, pushed back on his rolling chair and calling into the lab. “Mike!” Dimmock beckoned.

 

Mike Stamford appeared through the door a moment later.

 

Dimmock tipped his head in John’s direction. “Show him.”

 

Mike chuckled. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled up his device, flipping through for the scene he wanted. “Had to do a lecture at Saïd last night. Was coming back over the river when I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘That can’t be…’ But then, I recognized that little brunette from Queens, and, well…there you have it.”

 

He pushed a button and held the device in his palm. As the miniature scene emerged in the air above it, John felt all his annoyance and malcontent dissipate, replaced by a wholeheartedly shocked and utterly delighted brand of astonishment.

 

There, on Paradise Bridge, under a lamp and the falling winter snow, stood the Academic Detective himself, snogging the breath out of Molly Hooper.  

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Though this heist is fictional, Rembrandt’s _[Storm on the Sea of Galilee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Storm_on_the_Sea_of_Galilee)_ was, in fact, stolen from the Gardner Museum in 1990 during what is arguably the biggest art theft in modern history. Neither it, nor any of others, have ever been recovered. (It's also a massive canvas, though I hand-waved that detail too.) 
> 
> “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” _Julius Caesar_ , act IV, scene III, 218–224.


End file.
